“My time stack photos are much like a modern version of impressionism. By combining multiple photos into one image, it shows how light and other elements change over time. This gives a unique sense of movement in an otherwise still image.”

Power Plant by Matt Molloy: 263 photos merged into one image. “I wish I had set up a little earlier, so the lines made by the clouds went all the way to the horizon. I still like the way it turned out, I just hope the ice is sturdy enough for me to try this again.”

According to Molloy’s biography his artistic pursuits are multidisciplinary; music, painting, drawing and experimental time-lapse photography. I think you can see the influence of the painter in his work .

I really his Power Plant (above). The blocks of colour remind me of the northern lights and that contrast against the silhouette of the power plant with a hint of snow and ice is striking. If you look at the cloud blocks close to the horizon the colour is rich with nice smooth shapes drawing your eye and as your eye travels up the staccato effect trails off to the edge.

“The exposure I’ve received through 500px has been great. I didn’t expect the “time stacking” tutorial to get so much feedback, but I’m glad it did. It’s brought me lots of new followers and likely got me some sales, so the hard work payed off.”

Twisted Sky by Matt Molloy. “90 photos merged into one image. I found this timelapse with some interesting cloud action while digging through old photos for my Tumblr page. matt-molloy.tumblr.com/ It’s really neat to see the clouds move like that, I think it’s the only time I’ve captured it on “film” Check out the timelapse video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4ij9wAG1BU&#8221;

What I find more interesting than the technique is its origins. Almost every photo impressionist I follow had a eureka moment; an idea spawned from something unrelated that compelled them to produce photo impressionistic images.

Molloy started his journey with time lapse time photography. The time tracking stacking technique has been used for years in astrophotography to produce star trails.

“Once I made a few star trail images, I wondered why I’ve never seen this technique used on daylight timelapses. I tried it and, after a little tweaking here and there, I was astounded by the resulting images! They are kind of like a super long exposure, showing a large chunk of time in a single image, which is very much like the Impressionist movement that some clever painters came up with around the year 1870.”

Its worth looking at the time lapse video Molloy produced to see the genius here. Time lapse compresses time into a few moments. Time stacking captures the moment by compressing time into a single frame. It’s an idea that I have struggled with for many years (see my artist’s statement for example).

Twenty Minute Sunset by Matt Molloy. “313 photos merged into one image using the lighten layer-blending mode in photoshop. As the title implies, this was about 20 minutes of shooting. (at 4 second intervals) I was a little late shooting this timelapse, so it’s another one from my backyard. I’m lucky to live in such a photogenic area.”

I am always interested to know which images are an artist’s favourites. Molloy identified the following 3 and gave me his thoughts on why.

Sunset Spectrum by Matt Molloy “396 photos merged into one image using the lighten blending mode in photoshop. I think this one pretty much covers the colour spectrum of sunsets, lacking only the darker reds. I can’t get enough of this technique!”

Its hard not to fall in love with Sunset Spectrum; big colour, big sky, classic pastoral scene. To me this one feels like a crossover between the best elements of an impressionist painting and a traditional one. The contrast in styles is great here as it is in his other examples. Molloy told me that “Sunset Spectrum” is one of his favorite time stacks because “it has so many different colours in the sky. I think the barn and the field are a nice anchor for the image.”

Icy Sunset “400 photos merged into one image using the lighten layer-blending mode in photoshop. Even though it was extremely cold and windy, it was worth going back here for a sunset timelapse. It was a good one! Luckily my tripod weight (a brick on a rope) kept my camera fairly steady, but it didn’t help with the water spraying into the air (from the waves crashing into the piles of ice) and onto my lens. The fact that I was shooting at f/11 didn’t help that either. (you can see a few spots near the center of the photo from water/ice on the lens catching the sunlight) Still happy with the way this turned out!”

Icy Sunset has some of the elements I like in Power Plant but here the jagged ice is a rough reflection of the staccato clouds above. for that reason I think it is a powerful image.

According to Molloy “Icy Sunset is one of my favorite time stacks because it shows clouds that were moving in different directions, but the thing I like most is the crazy foreground. Every year the ice breaks up and it often gets piled up along the shore, it’s always an amazing sight to see.”

Crocheting Clouds (below) is an explosion of colour. In many ways it best captures my memories of late August twilight in Muskoka. For a real treat let your eye wander through the reflections in the water.

“Crocheting the Clouds ” was selected by Molloy as a favorites “because of the rich colours of the clouds. It’s nice that they were reflected in the water too. I think the texture of the clouds is interesting and their paths seem to radiate from the big tree, which leads the eye nicely.”

Crocheting the Clouds by Matt Molloy. “186 photos of the sunset merged into one image using the lighten layer-blending mode in photoshop. I like the pattern in the clouds created from the interval between shots.”